TECH SUPPORT: The city will contribute $15 million so NYU can build an engineering school in Downtown Brooklyn as seen in this rendering.

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TECH SUPPORT: The city will contribute million so NYU can build an engineering school in Downtown Brooklyn (renditions above). (
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The city’s bid to become a national technology center took another step forward yesterday when Mayor Bloomberg announced a deal with New York University to open an engineering school in Brooklyn.

The NYU deal to take over the former NYC Transit headquarters at 370 Jay St. is the second major engineering program headed to the city, following Cornell’s move to Roosevelt Island.

Bloomberg agreed to pump $15 million into NYU’s new school — called the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) — as he seeks to make the Big Apple the leading technology center in the country.

“New York has become the hottest destination in the United States for tech companies and entrepreneurs,” the mayor said.

“We recently surpassed Boston in venture capital funding for tech startups, and we’re home to a growing community of digital start-ups . . . CUSP will be another major lift to our city’s technology sector and help spur job growth for generations to come.”

NYU is partnering with several universities, including City University and Carnegie Mellon, to build what it promises will be a world-class graduate school that will focus on solving urban problems. It will hold its first class in Sepember 2013 in space initially rented at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn.

Construction of its final home on Jay Street — which the city owns and plans to lease to NYU — is set to be completed in 2017 and will serve roughly 530 students at a time.

NYU’s school will be located in what Bloomberg described as an underused, 150,000-square-foot building used by NYC Transit.

The venture is slated to produce 2,200 immediate construction jobs and 900 permanent jobs at the school.

But the city projects it will create a total of 7,700 jobs over the next 30 years, including school positions and those created by a projected 200 spin-off companies expected from the program.

In total, it will generate more than $5.5 billion in economic activity and $597 million in tax revenue, Bloomberg said.

“With CUSP, New York will also be a living laboratory, a source of research, a test-bed for new ideas and the economic beneficiary of our researchers’ discoveries,” NYU President John Sexton said at the announcement.

NYU will pony up $60 million to relocate the MTA and NYPD workers that utilize the building.